Thank you for writing about an overlooked aspect of the period considered to be the golden era of American capitalism. The toll for rising prosperity was levied heavily on the American family, on the 80-hour men who pursued the American dream as well as on their children who grew up in two-parent households hollowed out by absent fathers. It was an era when a family's fortunes depended on the fate of the lone breadwinner, which meant pulling up stakes whenever keeping the job required moving to another state. The fifties and sixties birthed the nomadic nuclear family, which sacrificed enduring community ties on the altar of economic necessity. By the mid-sixties the center could not hold and families began unraveling in a cultural revolution that produced alienated youth and exploding divorce rates, to be followed by other indicators of social disintegration. As Ms. Jacoby so poignantly discloses, the most meaningful story cannot be told through glamorized portrayals of the lives of the denizens of Madison Avenue advertising agencies but by recalling the quiet desperation of madmen across the land.
great comment
tries to educate me about some woman somewhere getting the short end of the stick, this ain't the oppression olympics, I don't think the grass is greener for anyone, so you can miss me with all that.
Who here is a woman hater?
FOH.
